Russian strikes hit Kyiv hours before truce in Oleshky begins
A Russian attack on Ukraine's capital Kyiv late on Monday killed one person and wounded eight. Hours later, a humanitarian truce was due to start in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky in the Kherson region.
Russian strikes on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, killed one person and wounded eight late on Monday. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said medical facilities were damaged, including an intensive care unit. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a ballistic missile hit the grounds of a university campus and stressed that no military facility was nearby.
The attack came hours before a truce was due to begin in Oleshky, a Russian-occupied city in Ukraine's southern Kherson region. The truce is meant to let humanitarian aid reach the city, where residents have reportedly faced severe shortages of food, water and medicine for months. It was set to start at 3am local time, with no end date announced. The city has been caught in fighting since Russian forces seized it in 2022.
Neither Russia, Ukraine nor the US has said who will monitor the truce or given details of the accompanying humanitarian operation. Russia's defence ministry said on Friday it would halt fire in the "Kherson sector" during the ceasefire. Ukraine accuses Russia of preventing residents from leaving; Moscow denies this.
Missiles and sabotage
Zelenskyy also said Ukraine has waited almost a month for US defence secretary Pete Hegseth to approve missile supplies for Patriot and NASAMS air defence systems, and that Kyiv would raise the issue with Washington again.
On Monday Romania said a network "coordinated" from Russia was involved in a fire on 14 September near an arms factory in Brasov. Two Belarusians and a Ukrainian, all residents of EU countries, were involved. Two were detained in Germany and the third is at large in Poland. Moscow has repeatedly denied such accusations.
Over the past three weeks at least eight cargo ships have been hit off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, with some 34 sailors reported dead or missing.
Rescue drone
Ukraine's military has begun using aerial rescue drones to evacuate wounded soldiers. The 475th Separate Assault Regiment said on Monday that the StarGate drone carried two stranded troops to safety near the Russian border in two missions last week. Developed by the Ukrainian company SkyFall, the six-rotor aircraft with an enclosed capsule is intended to cut rescue times from hours to minutes.
